Length Of A Novel Quotes

It's my contention that each book creates its own structure and its own length. I've written three or four slim books. It may be that the next novel is a big one, but I don't know. ~ Don DeLillo

I think I was also afraid of the novel. I write line by line, proceeding at snail's pace, rewriting as I go and paring the excess away. This is against all the best advice for writing long form prose, and I have tried over the years to break myself of the habit, but I can't bear to leave anything ungainly on the page and half the fun for me is that tinkering. So the length of a novel was a daunting prospect. ~ Debra Dean

[The movies] make the sort of comment only a novel can make, an allusion to the world in which people live, the psychological and economic motivations, the influences of the period in which they lived. ~ Orson Welles

When people say the word "convention," they are usually referring to large gatherings of the employees of companies and corporations who attend a mass assembly, usually in a big hotel somewhere, for the purpose of pretending to learn stuff when they are in fact enjoying a free trip somewhere, time off work, and the opportunity to flirt with strangers, drink, and otherwise indulge themselves. The first major difference between a business convention and a fan-dom convention is that fandom doesn't bother with the pretenses. They're just there to have a good time. The second difference is the dress code - the ensembles at a fan convention tend to be considerably more novel. ~ Jim Butcher

Weird. I rang it three times." – Nekoda
"There might be something with out condo." 'Other than the fact that it lived under a perpetual dismal cloud and was infested with roaches the size of his fist. It was probably over a hellmouth, too, that didn't allot for any kind of reception other than two cans joined by a length string.' – Nick ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

In the usual way I submitted manuscripts to publishers. This was not so much a feeling that I should be published as a wish to escape the feared and hated drudgery of "normal" work. In my twenties some of my work for children was published by Macmillan. However, I was twenty-seven before my adult novel, The Birthgrave, was taken by DAW Books in the USA. This enabled me finally to stop doing stupid and soul-killing jobs, and start working day and night as a professional writer. It felt like a rescue from damnation, and still does. ~ Tanith Lee

I want to give just a slight indication of the influence the book has had. I knew that George Orwell, in his second novel, A Clergyman's Daughter , published in 1935, had borrowed from Joyce for his nighttime scene in Trafalgar Square, where Deafie and Charlie and Snouter and Mr. Tallboys and The Kike and Mrs. Bendigo and the rest of the bums and losers keep up a barrage of song snatches, fractured prayers, curses, and crackpot reminiscences. But only on my most recent reading of Ulysses did I discover, in the middle of the long and intricate mock-Shakespeare scene at the National Library, the line 'Go to! You spent most of it in Georgina Johnson's bed, clergyman's daughter.' So now I think Orwell quarried his title from there, too. ~ Christopher Hitchens

I Need a Good Book

I need a good story.
I need a good book.
The kind that explodes
Off the shelf.
I need some good writing,
Alive and exciting,
To contemplate all by myself.

I need a good novel,
I need a good read.
I probably need
Two or three.
I need a good tale
Of love and betrayal
Or perhaps an adventure at sea.

I need a good saga.
I need a good yarn.
A momentous and mightily
Or slight one.
But with thousands and thousands
And thousands of books,
I need someone to tell me
The right one.

-John Lithgow ~ John Lithgow

I told them this novel was an American classic, in many ways the quintessential American novel. There were other contenders: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Moby-Dick, The Scarlet Letter. Some cite its subject matter, the American Dream, to justify this distinction. We in ancient countries have our past
we obsess over the past. They, the Americans, have a dream: they feel nostalgia about the promise of the future. ~ Azar Nafisi

I'm not the most prolific writer in the world, and, sadly, writing a novel involves a lot of effort. ~ Tibor Fischer

Fuck," God hissed when his length was taken to the back of Day's throat. Sucking hard and slow, Day came off with an audible pop. "Baby, I've missed you," Day murmured, nuzzling the thick hairs around the base. Inhaling him with long deep whiffs. "I've missed you, too." "I was talking to your dick," Day said breathily, going down again. God leaned back with a wide smile. His sweetheart was back. ~ A.E. Via

I had an idea for a medical conspiracy thriller. Since it was non-horror, I didn't want the publishers and editors bringing a lot of baggage - my history as a genre writer in the SF and horror fields, for instance - to the novel when they read it. I wanted them to consider the book solely on its own merits. So I called myself Colin Andrews. I was tired of seeing my books at floor level. Not that Herman Wouk and Phyllis Whitney and William Wharton are bad company, but I wanted to be up at eye level for a change, where people with bad backs could get a chance to see my books. ~ F. Paul Wilson

Tall, blond, and immortal." "Viking vampire assassins," Murphy said, barely stifling a sneer. "Sounds like the subject of a bad romance novel." "I disagree," Carwyn said. "That sounds like a rather excellent romance novel. ~ Elizabeth Hunter

We are not proponents of long life. We are proponents of joyful life, and when you find yourself in joy, the longevity usually follows. We do not count the success of a life by its length; we count it by its joy. - ABRAHAM ~ Christiane Northrup

I started writing a novel from the monster's point of view. It has its own difficulties but, I'm ashamed to say, it's much easier writing from a psychopath's point of view than from that of their empathetic opposite. ~ Justine Larbalestier

Man is still by instinct a predatory animal given to devilish aggression. The discoveries of science have immensely increased productivity of material things. They have increased the standards of living and comfort. They have eliminated infinite drudgery. They have increased leisure. But that gives more time for devilment. The work of science has eliminated much disease and suffering. It has increased the length of life. That, together with increase in productivity, has resulted in vastly increased populations. Also it increased the number of people engaged in devilment. ~ Herbert Hoover

It was only after five years in the army, when I was having to do a very boring job in a very boring place, that I thought: 'Why not try writing a novel?' partly out of youthful arrogance and partly because there had been a long line of writers in my mother's family. ~ Antony Beevor

The novel has become a function of the fragmented society, the fragmented consciousness. Human beings are so divided, are becoming more and more divided, and more subdivided in themselves, reflecting the world, that they reach out desperately, not knowing they do it, for information about other groups inside their own country, let alone about groups in other countries. It is a blind grasping out for their own wholeness, and the novel-report is a means toward it. ~ Doris Lessing

In the case of my book, I don't think it's really the coming-out gay novel that everyone really needed, even though it was received as such. The boy is too creepy, he betrays his teacher, the only adult man with whom he's enjoyed a sexual experience, etc. ~ Edmund White

Poetry always runs away from you - it's very difficult to grasp it, and every time you read it, depending on your conditions, you will have a different grasp of it. Whereas with a novel, once you have read it, you have grasped it. ~ Abbas Kiarostami

Time will solve all the problems Chinese school graduates face. In our bilingual society, there are no more Chinese school graduates, only English school graduates who can speak Mandarin. These English school graduates probably can also read and write Chinese, but they did not go to a Chinese school, and they act and think differently from us. Drawing a line between us, they would never say they graduated from a Chinese school, because former Chinese school graduates, that is, the vanishing group of people that includes us, are second-class citizens. They, on the other hand, belong to the first class, the Chinese elite, English school graduates who are fluent in Chinese. ~ Yeng Pway Ngon

Presently a soprano voice of richness and depth floated from the open windows of the parlor, resonating over the darkening greenery. All at once it was as if the entire scene before them was awakened by that voice, infused with unexpected life: the western sky, streaked with bands of pale gold and purple; the two houses, standing gray and disconsolate against that sky; the clusters of trees casting deep black shadows here and there across the ground. The same voice that brought everything suddenly to life also drew them into another, much deeper world - a world that was normally hidden, a world that stretched out into eternity. Yusuke, who had at first looked on with a sense of distance as everyone else sat listening, their faces intent on the music, found himself being gradually drawn in as well, forgetting the moment and the place, lending his ear during that unworldly stretch of time as if entranced. No one spoke. The singing could not have lasted ten minutes, but when it ended he found the darkness all at once grew deeper. ~ Minae Mizumura

unearthing some of the most disturbing moments in Austrian history. He had made a sort of subspecialty of studying intellectuals persecuted in the pre-Nazi era, and we discussed his fascinating work on the assassination of Hugo Bettauer, the writer and editor whose dystopian 1923 novel, Die Stadt Ohne Juden (The City Without Jews), remains one of the most uncanny predictions of a historic catastrophe ever written. ~ Tom Reiss

On Christmas morning, our joy or our happiness can be at a very high level, not because of our anticipation of what we might receive but, rather, in anticipation of watching our loved ones open our gifts to them. In fact, if we're not careful, we can fail to register sufficient excitement and joy upon opening the gifts we receive from others. We must remember that they are happiest at that time and to give them top billing, to stretch their happiness to its full length. ~ Earl Nightingale

I sighed.
Tink was sitting on the couch beside me and he'd commandeered my laptop at some point. The Walking Dead was on the television - well, it was on the Amazon Fire Stick TV thingy that the little bastard had ordered a few days ago unbeknownst to me. On my laptop, he was watching old episodes of Supernatural. I think he was on season three judging by the current length of Sam Winchester's hair.
At least it wasn't Harry Potter andTwilight this time, because I was getting really tired of hearing him quote Edward Cullen and Ron Weasley at the same time. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Whether I like it or not, most of my images of what various historical periods feel, smell, or sound like were acquired well before I set foot in any history class. They came from Margaret Mitchell, from Anya Seton, from M.M. Kaye, and a host of other authors, in their crackly plastic library bindings. Whether historians acknowledge it or not, scholarly history's illegitimate cousin, the historical novel, plays a profound role in shaping widely held conceptions of historical realities. ~ Lauren Willig

A novel is a collision of ideas. Three or four threads may be floating around in the writer's consciousness, and at a single moment in time, these ideas collide and produce a novel. ~ Anita Shreve

A book is a part of life, a manifestation of life, just as much as a tree or a horse or a star. It obeys its own rhythms, its own laws, whether it be a novel, a play, or a diary. The deep, hidden rhythm of life is always there - that of the pulse, the heart beat. ~ Henry Miller

I don't mind being called a "feminist," as I certainly embrace the tenets of feminism, though it does feel a little sad to me that we need to call a novel "feminist" simply because the female characters are interesting and strong. ~ Laurie Foos

I remember that a Korak once brought to me an old tattered fashion-plate from "Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper," containing three or four full-length figures of imaginary ladies, in the widest expansion of crinoline which fashion at that time prescribed. The poor Korak said he had often wondered what those curious objects could be; and now, as I was an American, perhaps I could tell him. He evidently had not the most remote suspicion that they were intended to represent human beings. I told him that those curious objects, as he called them, were American women. He burst out into a "tyee-e-e-e" of amazement, and asked with a wondering look, "Are all the women in your country as big as that at the bottom?" It was a severe reflection upon our ladies' dress, and I did not venture to tell him that the bigness was artificial, but merely replied sadly that they were. ~ George Kennan

The ambition of 'Ten Thousand Saints,' Eleanor Henderson's debut novel about a group of unambitious lost souls, is beautiful. In nearly 400 pages, Henderson does not hold back once: she writes the hell out of every moment, every scene, every perspective, every fleeting impression, every impulse and desire and bit of emotional detritus. ~ Stacey D'Erasmo

Writing a novel was completely awesome because parts of it could suck and I could throw them away. I didn't have to know the ending until I got there. ~ Austin Grossman

All her pent-up misery and frustration broke loose with a vengeance, and she yelled at him, 'You expect me to TRUST YOU?' Her brain felt like a live coal, spitting sparks. 'You expect me to go out with YOU! – when you tell me bare-faced LIES? D'you think I'm FUCKING STUPID?' She slapped his face just as hard as she had the night before, then stood up and fled the length of the alley; tears streaming – hating herself – hating Bobby – hating the entire rotten, cruel, hateful world – filled with blind, savage, useless hate.
She didn't see the way he laid his head on his knees in despair, nor if he really cried. ~ Bernie Morris

I was a little resentful that when a woman writes, her personal story becomes part of the story, even though the novel is fiction. ~ Roxane Gay

Jilly looked at it with a sinking heart. It was difficult enough when the exotic, undeniably gorgeous creature of her fantasies had turned out to be an obnoxious bully. Of course he had to have a Harley, as well, completing the perfect bad-boy image. With the tattooed teardrops on his high cheekbones and spiky, waist-length, flame-colored hair and his long, leather-clad legs and pointy-toed cowboy boots, he was almost irresistible, despite his manners.
A Harley sealed the deal. He was all her adolescent fantasies come true.
And it was time to grow up. ~ Anne Stuart

You never told me your name," he says, his voice so hauntingly familiar it causes a rush of heat to blanket my skin.
I sigh,staring blankly down the hall when I say, "Psycho Girl-Psycho Horseback Singing Girl..." I shrug. "I've heard it both ways."
He squints.His hand reaching for my shoulder,then falling away the instant he catches the look of reproach on my face.
"Look," I say,knowing I need to stop him before he can go any further.His kindness will only distract me at a time when I need to stay focused. "I've had a really bad day.And if my calculations are right,I have three hundred and eight more,give or take, before I get to graduate and get the heck out of this place. So,why don't you just call me whatever you want. Everyone else does.It's not like it matters..." My cheeks go hot,my eyes start to sting, and I know I'm rambling like a lunatic,but I cant seem to stop,can't seem to care.The world's most socially inept Seeker-that's me in a nutshell.
"Don't let them reduce you to that," he says,his gaze instense, his voice surprising me with its sincerity, its urgency. "Don't let them define how you see yourself,or your place here. And if you ever need someone to talk to,I'm not hard to find.I'm either in class, reading in the library,or eating lunch in the North hallway."
The second he says it,my gaze flies down the length of him.Slipping past a gray V-neck tee and dark denim jeans,not the least bit surprised when I land on the same heavy,black, th ~ Alyson Noel

My writing derived from the conviction I conceived during my college years: one should lead one's life as if one were the protagonist of an epic novel, with the outcome predetermined and chapter after chapter of edifying, traumatic, and exhilarating events to be suffered through. Since the end is known in advance, one must try to experience as much as possible in the brief time allotted. Writing is a way of ensuring that you pay enough attention along the way to understand what you see. ~ Jeffrey Tayler

The author always knows more than the reader does at the start of a novel, and gradually, they share that knowledge with the reader - that's storytelling. ~ Simon Toyne

What are they doing?' Mathys cried.
'They are mating, lad. And what a wondrous thing.'
Flukes grinding back and forth somewhere in the depths their song became a symphony vibrating across the ocean and ships in other latitudes vibrated and maybe continents vibrated and suddenly pressed close so close they looked like giantly godly Siamates and they drove themselves up and up rising out of the water all of them the massiveness the length of them high high into the blue above the blue below and they were blue and blue oceans sluicing down their sides and joined yes joined and everything all earthly things were small and they just stood there in the sky a young boys memory and then they dove back down into other atmospheres a deafening resounding roar that shook the timbers of the ship and shook the hearts of watching men and threw them to their knees. ~ Kiana Davenport

And so, Navani painted a prayer onto the stones themselves, sending her attendants for more ink. She paced off the size of the glyph as she continued its border, making it enormous, spreading her ink onto the tan rocks.
Soldiers gathered around, Sadeas stepping from his canopy, watching her paint, her back to the sun as she crawled on the ground and furiously dipped her brushpen into the ink jars. What was a prayer, if not creation? Making something where nothing existed. Creating a wish out of despair, a plea out of anguish. Bowing one's back before the Almighty, and forming humility from the empty pride of a human life.
Something from nothing. True creation.
Her tears mixed with the the ink. She went through four jars. She crawled, holding her safehand to the ground, brushing the stones and smearing ink on her cheeks when she wiped the tears. When she finally finished, she knelt back before a glyph twenty paces long, emblazoned as if in blood. The wet ink reflected sunlight, and she fired it with a candle; the ink was made to burn whether wet or dry. The flames burned across the length of the prayer, killing it and sending its soul to the Almighty. ~ Brandon Sanderson

A laconic and highly entertaining" novel. "The characters are strong, each showing major evidence of being a product of their respective cultures. Overall, the story is a strong one, with a couple of well-executed twists that succeed in surprising the reader."

- Publishers Weekly judge for the 2014 ABNA Contest, Two Brides for Ewan de Buchan


"I love historical romance novels and this one right off the bat based on the plot/hook made me want to read more. I devoured this...and re-read it twice. It seems like the author has a very good handle on the time period in which this novel is set."

- 2014 ABNA Contest judge, Two Brides for Ewan de Buchan


"I think this is really well crafted and interesting. The plot/hook caught me from the first paragraph. The characters are well done and I really loved the novelist's attention to historical detail...It's a really great romance novel, and is of publication quality. This novelist has a real future in writing romance (or even general fiction) books."

- 2014 ABNA Contest judge, Two Brides for Ewan de Buchan ~ E. Elizabeth Watson

I made a man out of you, you made a joke out of me. ~ Crystal Evans

Who was the real me? I can only repeat: I was a man of many faces.

At meetings I was earnest, enthusiastic, and committed; among friends, unconstrained and given to teasing; with Marketa, cynical and fitfully witty; and alone (and thinking of Marketa), unsure of myself and as agitated as a schoolboy.

Was the last face the real one?

No. They were all real: I was not a hypocrite, with one real face and several false ones. I had several faces because I was young and didn't know who I was or wanted to be. (I was frightened by the differences between one face and the next; none of them seemed to fit me properly, and I groped my way clumsily among them.) ~ Milan Kundera

The New Finance focused on the market's major systematic mistake. In failing to appreciate the strength of competitive forces in a market economy, it over estimates the length of the short run. In doing so, it overreacts to records of success and failure for individual companies, driving the prices of successful firms too high and their unsuccessful counterparts too low. ~ Robert Haugen

I grew up in a working-class Catholic family in south Louisiana. I went to a state university. I taught literature, wrote a novel that was the novel I wanted to write, and got a couple of good reviews but no real traction. I had no idea how to get a job in TV. ~ Nic Pizzolatto

[A novel by Henry James] is like a church lit but without a congregation to distract you, with every light and line focused on the high altar. And on the altar, very reverently place, intensely there, is a dead kitten, an egg-shell, a bit of string. ~ H.G.Wells

When I agreed to give this address, I started trying to think what the best advice I'd been given over the years was.

And it came from Stephen King twenty years ago, at the height of the success of Sandman. I was writing a comic that people loved and were taking seriously. King had like Sandman and my novel with Terry Pratchett, Good Omens, and he saw a madness, the long signing lines, all that, and his advice was this:

"This is really great. You should enjoy it."

And I didn't. Best advice I got that I ignored. Instead I worried about it. I worried about the next deadline, the next idea, the next story. There wasn't a moment for the next fourteen or fifteen years that I wasn't writing something in my head, or wondering about it. And I didn't stop and look around and go, This is really fun. I wish I'd enjoyed it more. It's been an amazing ride. But there were parts of the ride I missed, because I was too worried about things going wrong, about what came next, to enjoy the bit I was on.

That was the hardest lesson for me, I think: to let go and enjoy the ride, because the ride takes you to some remarkable and unexpected places. ~ Neil Gaiman

Do we really mean it when we say 'in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, until death do us part or do we add a silent clause, 'unless you shame me or disappoint me?' What is the cost of unconditional love and how capable are we of giving that? ~ Deirdre-Elizabeth Parker

You know, not every good book needs to be a movie, or a television series, or a video game. There's great work in those mediums, of course, but sometimes a book should remain a book. I still believe nothing tells a story with the richness and complexity of a good novel. When people say they think a book would make a good movie, they say this sometimes because, if it worked, they already saw all the images in the movie theatre that is in their brains. And sometimes that is the way it should stay. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon